At $1.5 mn, Dhoni most expensive in IPL auction

Mumbai, Feb 20 (IANS) Mahendra Singh Dhoni, captain of the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship winners, was the most expensive cricketer to be bought at $1.5 million at the historic Indian Premier League (IPL) auction here Wednesday. The name of the dashing Dhoni, who is away in Australia leading India in the Commonwealth Bank Triangular Series, came under the hammer as his city Ranchi is not among the eight franchise cities bidding for players in the Twenty20 IPL, beginning April 18.

By the end of the sixth of eight rounds Wednesday, Andrew Symonds was the second most expensive player, the Deccan Chronicle Hyderabad team picking the Australian all-rounder for $1.35 million. Sri Lankan dasher Sanath Jayasuriya narrowly missed touching the million-dollar-mark as he got Mukesh Ambani’s nod to play for Mumbai at $975,000.

There were two other players in the $900,000-plus bracket - India’s Irfan Pathan and South African Jacques Kallis. Pathan, a clean hitter with bat besides being a potent swing bowler, was snatched by Mohali for $925,000. Proteas all-rounder Kallis was bought by Bangalore for $900,000.

On the other side of the spectrum, quite surprisingly retired Australian pace spearhead Glenn McGrath and reliable Pakistani batsman Yousuf Youhana were not picked by any team. They were put in the reserve pool and will be presented before the bidders at the end of all the auction rounds.

Two other players fancied by the bidders were Harbhajan Singh, the India off-spinner who was snared by Mumbai for $850,000, apparently for his all-round capabilities, and left-handed West Indian opener Chris Gayle who went to Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata team for $800,000.

There are five icon players - Sachin Tendulkar (Mumbai), Rahul Dravid (Bangalore), Sourav Ganguly (Kolkata), Yuvraj Singh (Mohali) and Virender Sehwag (Delhi) - who will automatically play for their teams and will not be put up for auction. They will get 15 percent more money than the highest paid player of their teams.

With two more rounds to go, the race for the rest of the players who have signed up for the IPL now enters the final stretch. Each franchisee will be allowed to spend a minimum of $3.3 million and a maximum of $5 million for buying players.

While each team will be allowed to register a maximum of eight foreign players, only four will be able to play in the XI during any match. The XII, including the 12th man to be named for each match, will comprise four of the BCCI-contracted players, four Ranji Trophy players and four under-22 players besides the four overseas players.

All eight franchises, which have spent more than $718 million for over 80 international players, were at the auction. They are Mukesh Ambani (Mumbai), Vijay Mallya (Bangalore), Shah Rukh Khan (Kolkata), Preity Zinta (Mohali), Emerging Media (Jaipur), Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad), India Cements (Chennai) and GMR Group (Delhi).

It will be a 44-day tournament this year. The first game will be played under the floodlights at Bangalore’s M. Chinnaswamy Stadium April 18 with Bangalore taking on Kolkata.